Morning Glory
by NuthatchXi
Summary: "In the dwindling light of the blaze, growing cold in the circle of his arms, Marissa is as fragile as the dawn."


Disclaimer: I don't own the OC. Pity. **Spoilers through the end of season three.**

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When Ryan meets Marissa, she reminds him of a white hibiscus.

It's a thing he does—a thing he's always done. Part of him knows it's weird—for him to think this way, to contemplate girls in terms of flowers. He's just a borrowed kid from Chino, after all, with a family history so ugly it threatens to engulf him. By rights, he should compare girls to something gritty, like alcohol, the way Trey does: Beer, for the rowdy ones. Vodka_, _for the hollow-eyed, the worn out women with cheeks sunken by too many drugs. Champagne, (assigned sneeringly) for any girl who ever turned Trey down.

Later, once he meets Seth, Ryan is presented with another option. Seth integrates women into his comic books—calls them Wonder Woman, Black Widow, Lois Lane, or whichever awkward, cheerfully cheesy comparison suits his monologue of the day. The storehouse of characters he draws from is impressive, as are his witty, persuasive justifications for his comparisons—impressive especially since no matter how varied the personalities, they somehow all come to embody the virtues of Summer anyway.

But Ryan isn't very much like either Trey or Seth. He doesn't have Seth's way with words, the way the curly-haired boy toys with language like a cat with a mouse. He certainly doesn't find comic books compelling. He also can't be brutal-edged in his appraisals, like Trey, because somehow, Ryan has never been able to shake the conviction in his core that women are to be protected. Even when resentment pulses in every inch of him each time Dawn chooses her latest fling over her child's wellbeing. Even when a drunk Dawn slaps him clear across the face herself.

No, Ryan is simple. He doesn't do words, and he doesn't do caustic. But he does do images. So when he encounters Marissa on a Newport driveway, in a dream-like intersection of worlds that by all rights should never have occurred, he sees in her a flower that he's never seen in another girl before.

The curve of her slender, elegant neck, her angular face, the delicacy of her smile and frame. She is utterly unlike anything he has ever encountered. Graceful. Exotic. Ryan longs to stretch out his fingers, to see if her white skin is as velvety soft as the petal it resembles. He suspects it is. He's certain that under the cloud of cigarette smoke that spans the distance between them, she must smell as intoxicating as a tropical flower.

He tries a cheesy line, and then the gritty truth, all the while knowing he is hopelessly beneath her—but longing to interact. Because, after all, she is Hibiscus—snowy white petals, curving into perfection. Impossibly pure, demoralizingly lovely. Marissa is a Hawaiian bloom, as out of his reach as the island itself.

Such a flower could never cultivated by such a humble gardener, but Ryan thinks he'd be willing to spend his whole life trying.

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The stars align—or cross—and Ryan gets his wish. He discovers that he was more accurate in his assessment than he ever imagined. Even here in Newport, hibiscus should be a hothouse flower—sheltered from cold snaps and the wind, from fathers that lie, mothers that demean, and boyfriends that cheat. The shock of her family's combined betrayals almost kills her, and Ryan pours himself into her salvation. Even when the two of them are feuding, first about Luke, and later about Oliver, the drive to shelter her is overpowering.

Then her disagreement with him over Oliver turns into accusations—of jealousy, of emotional instability, and worse. When Oliver snaps, proving Ryan right on every count, in spite of everything, Ryan throws himself into saving her. He could never do anything else.

But he also realizes his mistake.

His Newport girl is no hibiscus, lily-white and above reproach. Marissa is a rose, scarlet and beguiling. The serpent of flowers, with thorns for fangs. The cuts from her mistrust go deep, and burn hot with infection from going too long disregarded. She is still captivatingly lovely, but his pain will not allow him to reach blindly into the brambles of her life again.

For a little while, Ryan escapes to Theresa. She's a Chino wildflower, sprouting determinedly between asphalt cracks—still in need of shelter from those that would pluck her, but by nature the scrappy sort of girl that takes root and keeps on fighting.

Theresa may not ever fully captivate his heart, but at least she doesn't shred it with her thorns.

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In the months—and then years—that pass, Ryan slowly starts to let go of both images of Marissa.

It's not that he's wrong. He isn't. The two of them are on again and off again as a couple—mostly off again—and through it all he sees her more clearly than he ever has. She's still more flawed and more special than he ever imagined—even though one of those flaws is deplorable judgment.

But there's also something new. Over time—of course not without relapses—she is beginning to get herself and her life in order. She _is _ethereal hibiscus, and jagged-edged rose, but she's starting to become something else besides.

By the time senior year pulls to a close, Marissa is also becoming a solitary woodland Violet, hesitantly taking root in the shade.

She'll never be hardy, Ryan knows. She'll never be a sunflower, exulting in the blaze of life. She'll certainly never be the va-va-voom pink peony that is Summer—not that Ryan would like it if she were. But somewhere behind the blinding white of her Madonna-like appeal and the crimson bitterness of every time she has dragged him down, there lies the soft purple of something starting to be real.

They still can't manage to be anything other than dysfunctional together, but they love one another, and for once they manage something like friendship...and it feels like it might actually be enough.

And maybe—maybe—if Marissa can become more violet than distant hibiscus, more wildflower than hazardous beauty—

Maybe they can try again someday.

It's a fool's hope, but Ryan has never been immune to daydreams.

He wouldn't compare girls to flowers if he were.

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On the shadowy drive to the airport after graduation, everything is as it should be. Ryan feels no regrets, only peace and a hint of the bittersweet. He'll gladly watch her bloom elsewhere, if she will only bloom violets.

Then chaos strikes.

Volchok, captivated by the fragrance of hyacinth and rose, cannot let go where Ryan has been able to. The terrifying car chase and the tumbling, brutal crash banish every fanciful thought from Ryan's brain. They almost banish everything else. But Atwoods have always been survivors, and how can Ryan let go when Marissa is here to save?

He knows his role in her life. He has always known.

The flicker of flame. Shattered glass, dripping oil, and the metallic flavor of fear. It tastes like blood on his tongue. It might be. He crawls hand and foot, in the balmy summer night and pulls her limp form from the wreckage. Ryan staggers, carrying her away, until he finally collapses from two kinds of pain.

Her lips are so pale.

She'll be alright. She has to be alright. So long as Ryan can get help, he hasn't failed. He can pull her back from the brink of this, he _must_—

But Marissa asks him to stay, the whisper an echo of her former voice, and her murmur shatters illusion.

And Ryan can no longer hide from the truth he sensed long ago, on a winding driveway on another summer's night.

She is not hibiscus, a divine flower out of reach. She is not a crimson rose, with her beauty cloaking the thorns that shred his trusting fingers. She is not a violet, tentatively blossoming on her own. She is all of those things, but she is none of those things. In the dwindling light of the blaze, growing cold in the circle of his arms, Marissa is as fragile as the dawn.

She is Morning Glory, born to fade.

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Author's note: If anyone reads this, I hope you enjoyed! Please review if you did—I know I'm, what, four years behind this fandom? More? What can I say, I didn't watch much TV when I was younger, and I'm playing catch up now. The OC got under my skin somehow, and I had to purge it, especially since Marissa's death hit me harder than I expected it to. I hope you found this cathartic, too. I might write something else in this fandom at some point—probably Ryan-centric, not a romance, and not tragic.

To any of my NCIS readers who might be looking at this—don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you! I just finished finals a week ago, I'm sick, and my family is moving into a new house tomorrow, but I'm really looking forward to digging back in to _A Matter of Trust_.

Please review!


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